When we were children, my friend said that she plucks the legs off of spiders and watches them try to dance. She said it casually, as if expecting to be met with like-mindedness. Even now when I see a spider, I imagine it with a lack of legs, too small to even bleed, bouncing around like a flea.
I made a deal when I was younger. Or rather, a deal was made with me. “Love me and it’ll be reciprocated.” I never thought it odd that an angel would need love so desperately; It took me too long to notice her playing with the agreement as she did with her own story. After sensing my slightest double take, she twisted off the crown of my head, sank her fangs into my frontal lobe, and screwed it back on crooked.
In my rattled and infected mind all earthly love was fragile as the spider’s connective joints. I felt like the spider; eight legs plucked off one by one with each facial contortion sensed during eye contact. Although I wasn’t bleeding, my skin was bloodstained from each splattered life sentence my phantom limbs struggled to swat away.
My eyes stung and my hearing muffled as if a real angel dunked me under salt water in an attempt to cleanse the poison. The salt water stung my eyes and blurred their faces, making it easier for me to make up a story about what they thought.
As if I was shedding my exoskeleton, my face hardened into a dull expression independent from my being, giving me a layer of protection from their eyes.
Each vibration penetrated my soft tissue like the beak of a mosquito; I tore at the surface and considered hacking off my hair, which I let down to hide behind, but was corroding my neck.
Chiseling themselves into my skull, my ruminations scared off all other inhabitants and made my head ache with their offensive hammering of my motor cortex.
Now bedridden as the spider who wasn’t designed to function without limbs, I wish to spin myself into a cocoon of silk as to enable those capable of reaching verdict to overlook me.
The “angel” must’ve made a similar deal with everyone else; though, they had to bestow the tweezers in exchange for love. It can’t be coincidence that when one snaps the tweezers and leaves me unbalanced, the others are anxious for their opportunity. I am pulled from eight different angles, begging “let’s make a deal! I’ll do what it takes to make you love me!”